Boobs, cocaine, and crying: another week in the GRTFL. Let’s just get to it already:
Top Scorers:
Brandon (Real World, Kang), 120 points: Brandon is a recovering drug addict who was drug tested as part of Real World policy. After his test, he had this exchange with an off-camera producer:
Producer: “Is there a reason why you might have coke in your system?” Brandon: “No.” Producer: “You definitely tested positive for coke.” Brandon: “That's something that should be sent to a lab then, because the last thing I'm going to do is spend my money on coke while I'm out here.”
OK, as if the positive drug test wasn’t enough to prove that he had dabbled in a little nose candy while in St. Thomas, his explanation for not doing drugs was basically, “I can’t afford it.” But let’s not get too tied up with details of Brandon’s case ... THEY DRUG TEST ON MTV REALITY SHOWS!?
It's the final day of Grantland's B.S. Report takeover, and today we bring you the nascent Reality TV Friday podcast. First we check in with our Real World–ers, who get off their island and hit St. Thomas's clubs; then we check in on the logo-centric drama of the Real Housewives of New York; and we can never go long without talking about the debaucherous Bachelor Pad. Plus, we're already beginning to feel some Olympics nostalgia as we wax about the wonder of Team USA's Instagram accounts and Kobe Bryant's Facebook page.
It was a tension-filled week in reality TV, one that really tested the emotional fortitude of our favorite GRTFL cast members. And guess what? Our favorite GRTFL cast members’ collective emotional fortitude failed with flying colors! Laura on Real World broke down, Housewives’ Heather and Sonja had their third and fourth meeting/argument about Sonja’s logo, and Ed, Bachelor Pad’s Village Drunk, well, he just lost faith in humanity. It’s OK, though; he may or may not be human himself. Allow me to explain:
Things have really picked up in the reality TV world, and accordingly things are heating up on the Reality TV Podcast. This week Jacoby and I needed a special guest, Hollywood Prospectus editor Emily Yoshida, to fully digest just what we witnessed on Monday's Bachelor Pad — especially since we were mentally exhausted from trying to understand Real Housewives phenomenon George, Aviva's dad. And in a twist, the roommates were allowed to leave their secluded island and something actually happened on Real World.
I’m all in on Bachelor Pad. Halfway through this Monday’s premiere episode, it dawned on me that this television program should never end. Bachelor Pad should be a TV network and the Bachelor Pad mansion should be a theme park where we can gawk at these crazypantses like zoo animals. If you’re not familiar with Bachelor Pad, it's what happens when ABC takes the rejected men and women from The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, throws them in a house, gives them a bunch of booze, and sets up cameras while they make absolute fools of themselves. It is a terrible, moronic, worthless television show that I can’t stop thinking about. Like we do with every new show we add to the league, we made up some asinine rules and divvied up the delusional dolts:
We decided it was time to turn our standard office conversations into a podcast. Reality tsar David Jacoby invited me to the podcast studio to talk about who Emily will choose on The Bachelorette, why I hate Laura from The Real World, the new royalty on the Real Housewives of New York, and whether Love and Hip Hop: Atlanta is even television at all. (Still unclear on that one.) And if you're not excited already, we also ponder the hypothetical, beautiful union of LeRoy (from Real World: Las Vegas) and Team USA, and our favorite Real Husband of Beverly Hills. This is for you, reality TV fans.
Delusion lies at the core of any good reality television character. This week was an especially interesting study in human beings who will create a universe in their heads that they don’t realize is not being shared with the rest of the species. In Jeff With One F from The Bachelorette's delusional universe, he doesn’t have to verbally address the fact that his family is obviously super Mormon. In Sonja from The Real Housewives of New York City’s delusional universe, she needs “one to three” interns to support her efforts just to make it. And in Brandon from Real World’s delusional universe, gorgeous women at bars drape themselves all over him because of his good looks and charisma, not the camera crew following his every move. Let’s start with him; it gets goodweird fast.
LeBron James’s super-MVPish triple-double domination to clinch the NBA title last night had nothing on what Ryan from The Bachelorette did this week. Like rapper Riff Raff or former president George W. Bush, Ryan is one of those rare pop culture characters that makes you constantly ask, “Is this man one of the dumbest people our species has ever produced? Or is he an über-genius sent from the future as part of some sort of elaborate social experiment?” I honestly can’t tell if the words coming out of Ryan's mouth are the thoughtless ramblings of a lunatic or carefully crafted comedy, scripted by some of the smartest writers in the world.
Ryan didn’t score any points this week, but if you think that is going to stop me from diving deep into his perplexing performance you must not be very familiar with how things work here at GRTFL Headquarters. Let’s get on with it.
